Winter Reflections

The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, together with vocal soloists, a children’s choir and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, invites you to a programme of both sumptuous late-Romantic splendour and finely nuanced choral textures. The concert opens with Karin Rehnqvist’s Ljus av ljus (Light of Light), which, with concentrated and serene intensity, reflects the spirit of Christmas in a new light.

The musical traditions of Christmas are further explored in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols, where English folk elements and familiar Christmas melodies merge into warm and reflective music for choir, soloists and orchestra.

Lars-Erik Larsson is one of Sweden’s most performed and beloved composers. In his four vignettes to Shakespeare’s drama, he captures the shifting moods of winter: clear and crisp, lyrical and dreamlike, yet also full of movement and life.

After the interval follows Benjamin Britten’s Saint Nicolas, which portrays the life of the saint through narrative music for soloists, orchestra and children’s and adult choirs. Here, the ceremonial and the playful coexist, as do gravity and jubilation.